People keep asking me why I dropped out of placements and choose to be an entrepreneur. I am fed up answering to all your questions. So, I will share my views in this post and give this link when someone again asks me a similar question. It saves time.
Rohit, my other associate at Desto Creative Solutions, says, "After 2 years, I may or may not be strong monetarily, but I would be strong as a person which is possible only by doing what you want to do."
Firstly, my choice was never about job vs. entrepreneurship. It is about one life style vs. another. I hate to work under some one. I hate a life which is routine and which bores me after an year or so. I hate a life which is not challenging. On the other hand, I love a job in a field that I am passionate about. I always love being myself. I love freedom to take my own decisions. I am ready to take risks and put in efforts to make my own venture successful. Yes, job is a safe and secure option but if I have to take risk, I have to take it as early as possible. Some famous saying I recently saw, "Take risks in life. If you win, you will lead. If you fail, you will guide".
Secondly, it is about my own personality that makes me go for a completely off-beat career option. I am an entrepreneur material. I am unique in most of the tasks I do. I have the guts to create and take an idea forward. I have the guts of living life in the hardest of times.
Thirdly, it also comes from inspiration. I am deeply influenced and inspired by two things.
1. My father 2. Steve Jobs` Stanford speech
My father has a harder than hardest background and he worked really hard to become the person he is today. From walking miles without chappals, from working as a person who make bills in Kamath hotel near Ravindrabharathi to pay off his College fee, he became a gold medalist in M.Sc. an M.Ed. and became a school teacher in Space Central School in Sri Hari Kota and went up the level to become a college lecturer and now he established his own college! Courage and Confidence - he has these qualities in tons. For every boy, his own father is his first hero. You are a Rockstar, dad.
Steve jobs` speech in Stanford is another thing that sent down a chill inside me. Particularly the following words moved me and indeed made a significant contribution in me making this decision -
"I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out to be OK. It was pretty scary at that time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.....
.... And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on."
About Typography which plays a great role in Graphic Design, he mentioned, "It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science cannot capture and I found it fascinating."
He continues, "Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can`t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something. Your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots connect down the road will give you confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that would make all the difference."
"And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven`t found it yet, keep looking and don`t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you will know when you find it. And, like any other relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So, keep looking. Don`t settle."
"Your time is limited. So, don`t waste it living someone else`s life. Don`t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people`s thinking. Don`t let the noise of other`s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Finally he concludes with a simple yet striking one-liner, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
Another reason that I am not taking up a job is that I do not think that my skills would really help a company that could hire me. I wouldn`t be contributing to the company`s growth in any way. Nor would I be really benefiting from the work I do there. It is a waste of time, money, resources and everything for both the company and myself. Also, it is not ethical to work in some company, taking money and doing nothing.
Rohit, my other associate at Desto Creative Solutions, says, "After 2 years, I may or may not be strong monetarily, but I would be strong as a person which is possible only by doing what you want to do."
Krithika Nelson, CEO of shopo.in says, "Entrepreneurs are a different clan! The good ones are very few and hard to find! It takes a lot of guts for someone to give up every comfort in life to start something of their own! The least you can do is to be proud of what they are doing, even if you don’t really understand everything about it"
I am sacrificing the comfort of having a secured, comfortable and may be luxurious life of doing a job, for having freedom in doing something on my own.
Input is primary. Output is secondary. I am ready to give the input.
Last but not the least, I believe that the world is full of possibilities.
Last but not the least, I believe that the world is full of possibilities.
